Development for LHC@home

Welcome. We've opened up the forums in case anyone wants to contribute.
We're still under development so don't waste too many cycles on it yet -- only run one or two jobs at a time. Let us know of any problems.
I believe that there are incompatibilities on Windows with VirtualBox versions beyond 4.3.12 (at least that's what vLHC@Home has found), but I seem to be able to run with 4.3.20 on Linux. I don't have a Mac box myself (yet...) so I have no experience there.

---

...
I believe that there are incompatibilities on Windows with VirtualBox versions beyond 4.3.12 (at least that's what vLHC@Home has found),....

Hi Ivan,

Cause you're using a newer version of vboxwrapper (26105) and not the older 26079 project vLHC is using,
Windows machines do not suffer from that incompability with newer VirtualBox-versions.
Users only should know, that vboxheadless processes will run with the same priority ('normal') than processes of the user itself.

Atm there are no cycles used at all. The VM is just sitting there and doing nothing.

The remote forward port isn't working - no access to the logs.
The VM is killed after ~10 hours, cause the fpops_bound limits further running and/or cause the VM is not doing the work supposed to do.

CP

...
I believe that there are incompatibilities on Windows with VirtualBox versions beyond 4.3.12 (at least that's what vLHC@Home has found),....

Hi Ivan,

Cause you're using a newer version of vboxwrapper (26105) and not the older 26079 project vLHC is using,
Windows machines do not suffer from that incompability with newer VirtualBox-versions.
Users only should know, that vboxheadless processes will run with the same priority ('normal') than processes of the user itself.

Atm there are no cycles used at all. The VM is just sitting there and doing nothing.

The remote forward port isn't working - no access to the logs.
The VM is killed after ~10 hours, cause the fpops_bound limits further running and/or cause the VM is not doing the work supposed to do.

CP

Hi, thanks for the feedback! I'm still having variable results myself, depending on which machine and OS I'm using, and perhaps the phase of the moon. :-( I've not found rhyme nor reason why the host system sometimes reports no CPU usage for the VM. The workload is bursty though, with long periods of no activity between periods of usage; I think it works in batch mode, doing several sub-jobs in succession and sending the results back after each one, but I'm not yet deep enough into the project to know all the nitty-gritty details.
Now that "outsiders" are discovering the project and putting their effort in, I think we need to get more detail into the Server Status page (for starters, a time stamp would be helpful to know how stale the info is).

---

Hmm, OK, there are some jobs that aren't working:

ERROR:root:No message received! Nothing to do!

These may be older jobs from before the most recent VM release, I had such behaviour earlier in the week. I'll ask the team to investigate.

---

Some new jobs have been uploaded, and the one I snared at home (Linux Mint) is behaving "as expected".
I asked that the number of jobs per computer be limited -- I got 21 jobs at once on my Windows machine at work the other day and it tried to run eight at once (I have HyperThreading turned on) but since each VM simulates a 1 GB machine my 8 GB PC was overwhelmed! This seems to have been implemented now at one job per machine ("This computer has reached a limit on tasks in progress"), which I'm happy with and I hope our loyal early-adopters are also in agreement with. Early days, baby steps...

---

Hi,

I assume someone is in the process of updating the CMS-dev website ?

It looks like it is being taken over by the vLHC team !

Links at the side point to vLHC and the MCPLOTS link in my account show me the work output of the user with the same User ID as me but for vLHC.

Just a work in progress ?

And the project is still just running test units, not production work?

Thanks.

Hi,

I assume someone is in the process of updating the CMS-dev website ?

It looks like it is being taken over by the vLHC team !

Links at the side point to vLHC and the MCPLOTS link in my account show me the work output of the user with the same User ID as me but for vLHC.

Just a work in progress ?

Also, it isn't possible to register a new computer to the project. It starts out as CMS-dev but then changes to VirtualLHC when it first contacts the server to get work...

Fri 26 Jun 2015 06:54:02 BST | CMS-dev | Master file download succeeded
Fri 26 Jun 2015 06:54:07 BST | CMS-dev | Sending scheduler request: Project initialization.
Fri 26 Jun 2015 06:54:07 BST | CMS-dev | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Fri 26 Jun 2015 06:54:09 BST | VirtualLHC@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Fri 26 Jun 2015 06:54:09 BST | VirtualLHC@home | You used the wrong URL for this project. When convenient, remove this project, then add http://lhcathome2.cern.ch/vLHCathome/
Fri 26 Jun 2015 06:54:09 BST | VirtualLHC@home | Invalid or missing account key. To fix, remove and add this project .

Hi,

I assume someone is in the process of updating the CMS-dev website ?

It looks like it is being taken over by the vLHC team !

Links at the side point to vLHC and the MCPLOTS link in my account show me the work output of the user with the same User ID as me but for vLHC.

Just a work in progress ?

Yes, there was an update for some security holes (as I understand it) but a few other things got mixed up as well. Since we seem to be basically using the vLHC installation as a template, some of the links are still pointing back there.

To answer the other question, yes we're still running test jobs. I'd like that to change -- I may have to make a unilateral decision to do it, if I have the right access permissions.

---

Since yesterday my CMS-dev has changed its name in the project list and now it is named as VirtualLHC@home.
As I was contributing to vLHC@home as well I got a conflict message from my BOINC manager and I had to delete CMS-dev.
Can I fix this someway or the two projects have been unified?

Since yesterday my CMS-dev has changed its name in the project list and now it is named as VirtualLHC@home.
As I was contributing to vLHC@home as well I got a conflict message from my BOINC manager and I had to delete CMS-dev.
Can I fix this someway or the two projects have been unified?

No unification as far as I know, but some confusion with the website. I notice that I now have somebody else's avatar picture. I presume there is just a wrongly directed hyperlink, but knowing our luck there'll be more than one. I'll give a heads-up to the website crew, in case thay haven't noticed it yet.

---

CMS Statistics

http://boincai05.cern.ch//CMS-dev/stats.php

CMS Server Status

http://boincai05.cern.ch/CMS-dev/server_status.php

CMS Message boards

http://boincai05.cern.ch/CMS-dev/forum_index.php